CALIFORNIA CANNABIS CLUBS ORGANIZE TO FIGHT FEDS

In an effort to fight what they say is the targeting of the medical
marijuana community by federal law enforcement, a California group called
the Cannabis Action Network (CAN) has launched a campaign to revive the
statewide movement that helped pass Prop. 215 -- the 1996 initiative that
allows seriously ill Californians to use cannabis with a doctor's
recommendation.

The campaign, called Americans for Safe Access (ASA), was sparked by a
series of raids carried out in San Francisco by the Drug Enforcement
Administration on Feb. 12. The operation led to the indictment of four men
under federal narcotics laws and the closure of the city's Sixth Street
Harm Reduction Center medical cannabis club. The men, who are legal medical
marijuana patients under California law, face cannabis cultivation and
conspiracy charges -- that carry potential life sentences.

"We are completely committed to protecting patients who are very close to
losing their access to medical cannabis," said CAN director Steph Sherer,
who notes that a number of California patients have been arrested on
federal drug charges. "We are talking about death, we are talking about
AIDS patients who will not have access to medication to let them live. That
is a reality."

DEA director Asa Hutchinson was in San Francisco the day of the raid, but
he denied that the DEA was targeting patients or cannabis clubs. Federal
prosecutors said the operation was in response to an alleged marijuana
trafficking operation at Sixth Street which had been under surveillance for
months.

"The marijuana clubs are not our primary priority; we could, but we have
not, targeted them for investigations," said Richard Meyer, a special agent
for the DEA's San Francisco field division. Meyer asserts that his agency
is focused on investigating drug trafficking operations, no matter where it
leads them. "We have heard people in the community saying that many
traffickers are using [the cannabis clubs] as a smoke screen to engage in
this business for profit and are not concerned with the sick. Any
cultivation, possession, and distribution of marijuana is illegal under
federal law. It is our job is to enforce those laws and we will."

The DEA rejected an appeal made in 2000 by California Attorney General Bill
Lockyer to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule One substance to Schedule
Two of the Federal Controlled Substances Act. This would permit doctors to
issue a cannabis prescription with medical oversight. Instead, the federal
government wants to punish doctors who now recommend cannabis to their
patients. The Justice Department is seeking to overturn a federal district
court ruling, Conant v. McCaffrey, which found that stifling cannabis
recommendations violated physicians' First Amendment rights. On April 8,
judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals questioned Department of
Justice attorneys who are appealing an injunction against sanctioning these
doctors.

"Why on earth does an administration that's committed to the concept of
federalism . . . want to go to this length to put doctors in jail for doing
something that's perfectly legal under state law?" asked Judge Alex
Kozinski at the hearing. U.S. Attorney Mark Stern argued that the
government should be allowed to investigate doctors whose advice "will make
it easier to obtain marijuana." But he had difficulty convincing judges
that there was a distinction between discussing cannabis and recommending it.

It's unclear when the appeals court will issue a ruling in this case. But
the cannabis clubs say they are bracing for more federal raids. The ASA
campaign is trying to rally public opinion to support the clubs and
understand "the futility of the war on drugs and the value of medical
marijuana." ASA is encouraging supporters to sign a "letter of resistance"
opposing Hutchinson and the Bush administration's medical cannabis policies.

"This is going to be ASA vs. Asa," says Sherer. "We are looking the Bush
administration in the eye, the voters here voted for this and this country
is a democracy, you are not going to take medical marijuana away from the
state of California."

Allegations And Proposals

The ASA campaign is also attempting to build stronger ties between the
cannabis clubs and their local communities. To support this effort, it is
developing a set of recommended protocols for the operation of cannabis
dispensaries. The guidelines include a mediation process that clubs can use
to address the concerns of residents, city officials, or local law
enforcement. The protocols are modeled on those which have already been
used by the Alliance of Berkeley Patients to address a zoning dispute at a
Berkeley club and two armed robberies at a second club. The Alliance
represents five Berkeley cannabis clubs. "We are involving city government
in the process so that if there is an issue or a situation with the city
government or antagonism by the federal government, we have allies," says
Sherer.

Prop. 215 offers no specific controls for the operation of medical cannabis
clubs in California. Each club has its own regulations and each city and
county negotiate their own medical marijuana laws. Sherer wants to
encourage a set of statewide club guidelines, export the model to other
cities, and network the Alliances together. "How do you police yourself
when you are playing a fine line on the state level and illegal on the
federal level?" asks Sherer. "Where do you go?"

The Alliance guidelines include membership restriction to qualified
patients, the need to demonstrate patient eligibility and screening of
members. Membership is not required but all the Berkeley clubs follow
Alliance protocols. The Alliance investigates issues of non-compliance. "We
don't provide cannabis to people that are not legally sanctioned to have it
from their doctors and we won't provide more than they need for their
personal use" said Debby Goldsberry, director of Berkeley Patients Group, a
cannabis club which helped draft the Alliance guidelines.

Ed Rosenthal, one of the four men facing federal drug charges in connection
with the DEA raid, agrees that common accounting standards could help
thwart charges of club profiteering. He proposes that the city of San
Francisco charter all its medical marijuana clubs and make the club
employees officers of the city. The author of numerous books and articles
on cannabis cultivation, Rosenthal also supports efforts to regulate
cannabis quality and price. "I think patients have a right to expect a
certain quality of product and the way to do that would be to standardize
it," says Rosenthal.

Fred Medrano, the director of health and human services for the city of
Berkeley, says the city has taken a low profile in regulating the medical
cannabis clubs, leaving the responsibility of community coexistance to club
operators. He says the Alliance guidelines are a useful way to set
standards and mediate disputes. "Typically, in most communities, there is
tension between the needs of patients to receive medical marijuana for
medical purposes and the potential effects on the community living in the
neighborhood," said Medrano. "There has to be acceptance and you can't have
that unless you are willing to meet people and form relationships. This is
a pretty good first step."

The importance of resolving community concerns became clear after the
February DEA raid in San Francisco when it was revealed that accusations of
trafficking by a city clergy member, had helped the DEA obtain search
warrants. The complaint was brought by the Reverend Father Nazarin, who
says he the presiding bishop of a breakaway faction of the Iraqi-based
Assyrian-Chaldean Catholic Church. Nazarin was associated with another San
Francisco cannabis club -- the St. Martin de Porres Chapel which he
considered a department of his church. According to a DEA affidavit,
Nazarin wrote a letter to the agency alleging that some of the medical
marijuana dispensaries were "owned and operated by greedy, professional
drug dealers who hide behind the shield of Proposition 215."

In a later statement, Nazarin further charged that the medical cannabis
movement had been "hijacked" by profiteers who hid profits with fraudulent
bookkeeping. Nazarin said staff members at the Sixth Street Harm Reduction
Center club told him that another member of the staff, Rick Watts, was
"operating an illegal drug market in the back room" and insisted that "the
medical marijuana movement is either unwilling or unable to expel its
criminal elements."

Watts, son of the philosopher Alan Watts, was one of the four men arrested
in the DEA sweep. Neither Watts, nor his attorney, had any comment on the case.

Counter Charges And Court Rulings

Nazarin's allegations rocked the Bay Area medical cannabis community. The
directors of the St. Martin de Porres Chapel say they were not aware of
Nazarin's concerns before he sent his letter to the DEA. They reject
Nazarin's charges and have banished him from the St. Martin club, which is
being reorganized under a new name. St. Martin director Wayne Justmann,
said that Father Nazarin grew cannabis as a patient caregiver under Prop.
215 and attempted to sell it to St. Martin at inflated prices. Both
Justmann and Rosenthal say Nazarin is motivated by a financial interest in
the Sixth Street club. "He wanted control over [St. Martin] and the Sixth
Street facility," said Justmann. "He wanted to take over."

Nazarin vehemently denies that he sought to control the St. Martin or Sixth
Streets clubs. He says he simply wants to alert authorities of club
mismanagement, and wrote another letter to the DEA this month claiming that
"a criminal element is moving to take control" of the Northern California
clubs. Debby Goldsberry says she wishes there was an Alliance in San
Francisco where Nazarin could put his issues on the table. Had Nazarin's
charges been directed against a Berkeley club, Goldsberry said the Alliance
would have investigated and reached a consensus solution satisfactory to
all parties. At this point, Goldsberry says she is skeptical of Nazarin's
allegations of mismanagement.

"I have been involved in these issues for 10 to 12 years and I haven't seen
that kind of profiteering," she said. "It doesn't seem to me that he has
any widespread experience with the movement, he is applying limited
experiences in a broad and sweeping way and he is harming us all."

Medrano points out that without a forum for settling disputes, the
potential for conflict will continue to exist. "Unless you create the
vehicle for opportunities for relationship building and coexistence, you
are basically left with a lot of unknowns and sometimes the unknowns can
lead to hasty conclusions and prejudices," Medrano said.

For his part, Nazarin says the clubs should address allegations of
mismanagement by working more closely with federal authorities. He proposes
that club workers and volunteers undergo background checks. But he declined
to provide any information about his own background or the activities of
his breakaway church. The Assyrian-Chaldean Catholic diocese in the United
States does not recognize him as a priest.

Nazarin further proposes that the DEA and the Attorney General of
California designate non-profit organizations to cultivate and distribute
medical marijuana to approved dispensaries that buy only from these
sources. "I would ask the U.S. Attorney General to encourage faith-based
organizations to assume the lead in this project," writes Nazarin.

DEA special agent Meyer says the agency is not ready to acknowledge that
marijuana has any medicinal value or help to distribute it. "I think it is
good that the clubs are concerned about people abusing the system," says
Meyer. "But that does not change the fact that under federal law marijuana
is illegal and we all know that federal law supersedes state law."

Federal legislation does not always trump state law. The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled last May that medical necessity was not a defense against prosecution
under the Federal Controlled Substances Act. But on April 19, the case will
be heard again by a U.S. District Court judge who will decide whether the
state or the federal government has jurisdiction over medical marijuana
distribution inside California. The ASA campaign is planning street
protests to mark the date.